A litany of new economic data awaits Friday’s pre-market, just ahead of the three-day Memorial Day weekend. Market futures are up, looking to close the week on a solidly positive note: the Dow is +170 points at this hour, the S&P 500 +15 and the Nasdaq +45. These numbers remained intact following these data summaries:
Personal Income for April dropped significantly: -13.1% month over month, after a downwardly revised March popped on the stimulus check bonanza, +20.9%. Expectations were for even a deeper fall, to -14%. Still, income numbers are coming out ahead when we average the two months together. The year 2021 has been uncommonly volatile on personal income; usually, these numbers tack a lot closer to breakeven. We’ll see if this volatility persists as the Great Reopening continues.
Consumer Spending matched expectations of +0.5% for the month of April, with pent-up demand meeting higher price points on many consumer goods. This followed the stimulus-enhanced +4.7% for March, which was upwardly revised from 4.2% originally reported. Again, what will interest investors most — not to mention the Fed — will be whether this pent-up demand cools in the face of even higher inflation, transitory though it may be.
April’s Core Inflation came in a tad hotter than expected — +0.7% versus +0.6% — following last month’s print of +0.4%. Year over year, this amounts to +3.1%, which, if we recall our core consumer prices reported earlier this month in the CPI, pretty much matches the +3.0%. The deflator was +0.6% on the month, +3.6% year over year. This is the highest read in 13 years.
Finally, we see Advance Trade in Goods for April pulling back a bit from the all-time low posted for March: -$85.2 billion versus -$90.6 billion reported a month ago. The overall trend — especially from the actions taken during the Great Recession, where much of this advance trade was paid down — is still lower; we may even have forgotten the blip we saw in early 2020 (pre-pandemic, but during the “trade war” with China) which brought us briefly to $60 billion.
As it’s a long weekend, we don’t expect a lot of trading volume today, relatively. But these metrics -- from today and throughout this past week -- will be put to work in determining the temperature of our current economy. In our holiday-shortened next week, we look forward to the all-important monthly jobs data, along with Manufacturing, Services and Productivity reads. We also will follow Capitol Hill for signs of an infrastructure bill possibly being signed into law soon.
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Personal Income Declines in April
A litany of new economic data awaits Friday’s pre-market, just ahead of the three-day Memorial Day weekend. Market futures are up, looking to close the week on a solidly positive note: the Dow is +170 points at this hour, the S&P 500 +15 and the Nasdaq +45. These numbers remained intact following these data summaries:
Personal Income for April dropped significantly: -13.1% month over month, after a downwardly revised March popped on the stimulus check bonanza, +20.9%. Expectations were for even a deeper fall, to -14%. Still, income numbers are coming out ahead when we average the two months together. The year 2021 has been uncommonly volatile on personal income; usually, these numbers tack a lot closer to breakeven. We’ll see if this volatility persists as the Great Reopening continues.
Consumer Spending matched expectations of +0.5% for the month of April, with pent-up demand meeting higher price points on many consumer goods. This followed the stimulus-enhanced +4.7% for March, which was upwardly revised from 4.2% originally reported. Again, what will interest investors most — not to mention the Fed — will be whether this pent-up demand cools in the face of even higher inflation, transitory though it may be.
April’s Core Inflation came in a tad hotter than expected — +0.7% versus +0.6% — following last month’s print of +0.4%. Year over year, this amounts to +3.1%, which, if we recall our core consumer prices reported earlier this month in the CPI, pretty much matches the +3.0%. The deflator was +0.6% on the month, +3.6% year over year. This is the highest read in 13 years.
Finally, we see Advance Trade in Goods for April pulling back a bit from the all-time low posted for March: -$85.2 billion versus -$90.6 billion reported a month ago. The overall trend — especially from the actions taken during the Great Recession, where much of this advance trade was paid down — is still lower; we may even have forgotten the blip we saw in early 2020 (pre-pandemic, but during the “trade war” with China) which brought us briefly to $60 billion.
As it’s a long weekend, we don’t expect a lot of trading volume today, relatively. But these metrics -- from today and throughout this past week -- will be put to work in determining the temperature of our current economy. In our holiday-shortened next week, we look forward to the all-important monthly jobs data, along with Manufacturing, Services and Productivity reads. We also will follow Capitol Hill for signs of an infrastructure bill possibly being signed into law soon.